B.C. artist tours U.S. with stitched Trump quotes

A Victoria artist who started taking her frustrations out in stitching has taken her work on tour through the United States.

Diana Weymar works with fabrics, and in January 2018, she decided to stitch a quote from U.S. President Donald Trump onto an old piece of her grandmother’s needlework.

“I am a very stable genius” stood out against threaded flowers and leaves.

And when Weymar posted the image to Instagram, it got a great response.

So, she set a goal of making one stitched Trump quote a week, thinking eventually he would stop saying ridiculous things.

It quickly became a daily practice, and the project grew to involve public contributions.

Now, more than 1,400 pieces from around the world have been made for the Tiny Pricks Project, each with beautiful stitch work on some form of cloth featuring audacious statements from the leader of the free world.

“I think everything is in that juxtaposition. If it was [Barack] Obama or [the Persian poet] Rumi, it wouldn’t be interesting,” she said. “There’s nothing as interesting as the horrendous and heart-warming.”

Weymar is an American citizen with permanent residence in Canada, and has seen the impact of Trump’s rhetoric on both sides of the border.

She said having the quotes recorded in a tangible way is important in a world where digital content can be overwhelming.

“When we see it in another medium, we’re a little less protected and caught off guard,” she said. “Things on Twitter and Facebook are impersonal … the hand isn’t evident. When a hand is evident, I think you look a little longer.”

The Tiny Pricks Project currently has a show on in New York until Sept. 30, and another in Portland, Maine, until Nov. 30.

Weymar aims to collect 2,020 pieces by 2020 to take with her on tour in swing states during the next election.

A piece of stitch work recently done by Diana Weymar, referring to a Sept. 1 incident where U.S. President Donald Trump erroneously reported the path of Hurricane Dorian, later pointing to a map which showed the hurricane’s path extended with what appeared to be a line from a Sharpie. Days later, Trump tweeted that corrupt reporters still hadn’t apologized for the Sharpie comments. (Instagram/ @TinyPricksProject)